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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Bruce Barry on the information blackout of the poll of Nashville voters that WSMV released in a late Friday news dump last week:

unless you watch Channel 4 (or read Pith or other blogs), you would know nothing about the poll because other news organizations in the city have ignored the WSMV-commissioned survey. Four days have gone by since the poll came out, and there has been no concrete mention of its findings in either The Tennessean or The City Paper nor on the news websites of any of the other local TV stations. Only the Nashville Business Journal picked up on the poll, six paragraphs into a story posted Monday.

It is predictable that any information that ever came out about public backlash or considerable opposition to the new convention center would be marginalized or boycotted by the mainstream media.

That has been standard practice all along. Any bad news about the MCC quickly disappears.

A couple of weeks ago, channel 4 & channel 5 both did online polls on support for the MCC. I know online polls are unreliable, but what struck me was that they were almost identicle. Both came out about 75/25 against. Given how well funded and organized the pro-MCC camp is (and how easy it is to fudge online polls), I expected it to be a lot closer.

Now WSMV's legitimate poll has produced the same results. Clearly the MCC would lose in a referendem by a wide margin.

Channnel 5 reported last night that Councilmembers have been flooded with emails on the subject and that they are running 50/50. I don't believe that. Maybe the PR people have been concentrating on emails instead of polls. After all, the only votes that count are on the council.

Its disturbing how many of our elected officials seem to have no regard for the widespread concerns of the vast majority of the citizens. I know they think we'll forget about it by election time. I, for one, will not.